Bodies by Walton Beacham

About the book

Bodies is a short, comic novel about an absurd natural disaster that changes the social fabric of a rigid society. The plot is deceptively simple, yet becomes intricately intertwined as the novel progresses. The opening chapters establish the absurdity of a random act of nature, which moves steadily toward a serious thematic conclusion. A flock of several million starlings lands on the capitol building of Virginia, designed by Thomas Jefferson as a proud symbol of independence and defiance of abusive authority. Everyone assumes that the birds will fly to some other roosting ground in a few days, but when they don't, Richmonders begin devising schemes to drive them away. Nothing works, and when it becomes clear that these eerie birds are forcing shoppers to stay at home, Nordstrom decides to capitalize on the menacing flock by launching a marketing campaign featuring scintillating black lingerie, which it dubs "Bird Lady Nightwear." The campaign catapults a local university history professor and former exotic dancer, into an overnight sensation as "Bird Lady" -- sex symbol, prophet, and goddess of doom.

The subtle but poignant undercurrents of the ad campaign are racial and sexual in a city and a society that have dogmatically resisted change since the American Revolution. In spite of all the clever and ridiculous ideas to drive the starlings away, they become a pestilence in the biblical sense, and there are only two people who understand the curse and represent humans in their struggle against forces greater than themselves. One is Jackson, the groundskeeper, who has been mulching azaleas on the capitol grounds for twenty-five years and is now charged with cleaning up the dung and dead birds. At his house in the country, Jackson experiments with devices to defeat the birds, and after twenty-eight days of physical and political chaos, he learns the secret of how to drive them away. The personification of sexuality and promiscuity, Bird Lady is either the fantasy or nightmare of everyone she touches. She understands and eventually reconciles the forces of death, history, slavery, unrequited love, and the carnal fragility of the many bodies, living and dead, who populate this story.

The novel's themes begin to converge as the plague of the starlings turns biblical and as Bird Lady's sexuality becomes the haunting cry of Annabelle Lee (Poe's boyhood home is nearby), and Vera Wang's creations are symbolic of Bird Lady's anguished spirit. Victoria's Secret models are brought to Richmond to model the quickly expanding line of lingerie, but their passion pales in comparison to Bird Lady's and the Confederate widows' passion for their lost men. The story ends with Bird Lady at the pinnacle of the Confederate widows' pyramid at midnight for a final ad agency shoot, where she finally comes to terms with her dead lover and understands the wailing heart as it clings to life.

About the author

Walton Beacham is founder and president of Beacham Publishing Corp, a distinguished publisher of encyclopedic-scoped reference books since 1985. Among Beacham Publishing's critically acclaimed works are Beacham's Guide to Endangered Species (9 volumes), Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults (15 volumes), and Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction (18 volumes). Before founding Beacham Publishing, Mr. Beacham was Associate Professor of English at the University of Richmond and Virginia Commonwealth University (1970-1982) and vice president of Salem Press (1982-1984), where he served as Academic Director and Director of Marketing.

Mr. Beacham holds four degrees: B.S. in Industrial Management from Georgia Tech, 1967; B.A. in English Literature from Georgia State University, 1968; M.A. in English Literature and M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Arkansas, 1970. His publications include dozens of scholarly articles and poems in various journals, a book-length critical text, The Meaning of Poetry: A Guide to Explication (Allyn and Bacon, 1973), and three computer software manuals, including the mega best-seller, Using WordPerfect (Que Corporation). As Book Editor for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, his reviews appeared every week in the Sunday book section, and he has contributed reviews to national magazines, including The Nation. In 1997, Mr. Beacham relocated Beacham Publishing from Washington, D.C. to Sarasota, Florida, where, with his wife Deborah, he continues to direct the company and where he designs and builds eighteenth-century-Tuscan-inspired waterfront homes.